Data centers have become the largest target client sector for equipment manufacturers and components suppliers over the past ten years. Yet many of these vendors still do not understand that when it comes to data centers, none are the same. And, while there are large categories of data centers, within them there can be much variation in networking needs. In fact, some of the largest data centers network asset acquisition trends have changed drastically in this time period. For this first post in a series, we examine the large categories of data centers and what their data center interconnect (DCI) requirements are ...

At Light Reading’s recent 2020 Vision summit a number of telecom operators expressed concerned about whether they have the staff skillset and organization needed to support innovation. Is this a valid concern? Yes, but it may not be as big as they fear, and it is addressable...

Today “over-the-top” or “OTT” strikes fear into wireline Communications Service Providers (CSPs). What if OTT could inspire thoughts of opportunity rather than eliciting fear of revenue erosion? NFV and SDN Technologies are now coming together with a vast ecosystem of hardware and software components. Together, they enable CSPs to deliver hosted managed services over the top of existing wireline infrastructure.

When you attend telecom conferences as part of your day job as I do, you are frequently subject to the biggest trending spook acronym in the industry: OTT. OTT stands for Over the Top, a rather awkward (in my opinion) denomination for market players who use the Internet (which stands ‘above’ the physical network of telecom operators, at least in the OSI stack) to offer services directly to the telecom operators’ customers.

It's almost impossible to open a tech publication or even a mainstream publication and not find a discussion about the continued fierce growth in mobile data and hyperbole on the consequences. Only this weekend the FT featured a discussion on the U.K.'s 'capacity crunch' and how networks will (or more to the point, won't) cope in 2030 when we're consuming 300 times more mobile data than today. I'm amazed that some people are already discussing the failure of networks that are eighteen years away.